Guide
The website audit checklist
Everything worth checking on a site, in the order that finds the expensive problems first. Written for people who audit sites for other people - so the last section is about turning the audit into work.
Most audit checklists are sorted by category, which means you spend an hour on image compression before you notice the contact form is broken. This one is sorted by what costs the business money, so a half-finished audit is still a useful one.
1. The money path
Start where revenue actually happens. A site can fail every technical check and still make money; it cannot survive a broken checkout.
Does the thing work at all
- Complete a purchase or submit the main form yourself, on a phone, as a stranger would.
- Check that form submissions actually arrive, and that someone reads where they arrive.
- Test the site logged out, in a private window - not as an admin who is already signed in.
- Follow every call-to-action on the home page and confirm it goes where it claims.
Is the offer legible in five seconds
- Can a stranger say what this business sells, from the top of the home page alone?
- Is there one obvious next step per page, or several competing ones?
- Does the page name the visitor's problem before it names the company's history?
- Are prices, or at least price ranges, findable without contacting anyone?
2. Technical basics
Not exhaustive - the items here are the ones that routinely turn out to be costing something.
Indexing and access
- robots.txt does not block anything important, and does block private pages.
- An XML sitemap exists, is current, and is submitted in Search Console.
- No accidental noindex on pages that should rank - check the templates, not just one page.
- One canonical host: www or bare domain, everything else redirecting to it once.
- HTTPS everywhere, with no mixed-content warnings.
Speed and stability
- Largest Contentful Paint on the main landing pages, measured on mobile, on a real connection.
- Images sized for their container and served in a modern format.
- No layout shift as the page loads - especially banners and cookie notices.
- 404s from internal links, and redirect chains more than one hop long.
3. Content and search
The pages themselves
- Every important page has a title tag written for a person, not a keyword list.
- One H1 per page, describing the page rather than the brand.
- Pages that target the same search are consolidated, not competing.
- Thin pages - under a couple of hundred words with nothing unique - are improved or removed.
- Internal links point from strong pages to the pages that need help.
Trust
- Real evidence: named clients, real numbers, work you can look at.
- Contact details, business address, and who is behind the company.
- Testimonials attributed to actual people rather than initials.
- Anything a cautious buyer would check before paying: terms, guarantees, credentials.
4. Conversion
The gap between traffic and inquiries
- Analytics installed and actually recording the events that matter.
- Every form tested for length, mobile keyboard behavior, and error messages that explain themselves.
- One thing on the page for a visitor who is interested but not ready - something worth an email address.
- Follow-up that happens within a day, not a week.
Turning the audit into the reason they hire you
For an agency or a consultant, the audit is not overhead. It is the single most persuasive thing you own, because it proves how you think about a problem that belongs to this one prospect. That is why so many practitioners give away store teardowns, ad-account reviews, and first-look audits: it works.
The limit is arithmetic. A good audit takes an hour or two, so you can do a handful a week for free, which means most of the people who would have hired you never receive one. The way out is to let the questions do the collecting and have the first read written automatically - the same judgment, applied to what each person told you, delivered in writing while they are still paying attention.
The audit that arrives in five minutes is worth less than the one you spend two hours on. It is also worth infinitely more than the one that never gets written, which is what happens to almost all of them.
Common questions
- How long should a website audit take?
- A useful first pass takes an hour if you have the checklist and access. A full technical audit of a large site is days of work. Sell the first pass and quote the rest.
- What tools do I need?
- A crawler, Search Console access, an analytics view, and a phone. Most of the findings that change revenue come from using the site as a customer, which needs no tools at all.
- Should I give the audit away for free?
- Give away the diagnosis, charge for the fix. A specific, honest read on someone's site is the most convincing sales material you will ever produce, and it is only expensive when it is done by hand for people who were never going to buy.
See it built
Complete example businesses - the knowledge base, the questions, and a finished page you can read.
See what this would look like for your business
Answer a few questions and it pitches the consultation lead magnet it would build for you - the concept, the questions, and what each person would receive. No account, no card.